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New Jersey Transit was once at the forefront of commuter railroads in the United States. Now it is saddled with financial problems, aging infrastructure and unending delays.Credit
Richard Perry/The New York Times

New Jersey Transit, a Cautionary Tale of Neglect

The swift decline of one of the nation’s busiest commuter railroads is a story of failures and mismanagement, and ominous for mass transit systems across the country.

Its ridership was increasing, and its trains were new and running on time. It won a coveted award for outstanding public transportation three times. In the years ahead, faster routes to Manhattan and double-decker trains would put it at the forefront of the nation’s commuter railroads. Even as recently as 2007, it won a leadership award from New York University.

That all seems like a very long time ago.

Today, New Jersey Transit is in crisis. Its aging tracks and trains need billions of dollars in improvements. Delays and fares are rising along with ridership, with passenger cars packed to the breaking point. The century-old tunnel that carries its trains to New York is crumbling. And the agency has gone nearly a year without a permanent leader.

“It was an excellent railroad and running quite well until the last seven years, and it has been in constant decline,” said Martin E. Robins, a former deputy executive director of the agency.

Under the administration of Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, the state subsidy for the agency has plunged by more than 90 percent. Gaping holes in the agency’s past two budgets were filled by fare increases and service reductions or other cuts. Plans for a new tunnel under the Hudson River — one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the country — were torpedoed by Mr. Christie, who pushed for some of the money to be diverted to road-building projects.

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A train that slammed into a station in Hoboken, N.J., last month killed a young mother and injured more than 100 others.Credit
National Transportation Safety Board

The result can be felt by commuters daily. So far this year, the railroad has racked up at least 125 major train delays, about one every two days. Its record for punctuality is declining, and its trains are breaking down more often — evidence that maintenance is suffering.

Now, New Jersey Transit is facing its most high-profile test: A train slammed into a station in Hoboken last month, killing a young mother, injuring more than 100 other people and raising concerns about whether the railroad’s financial and leadership problems are creating an unsafe system. Even before the crash, the Federal Railroad Administration had taken the unusual step of opening an investigation into the agency after a spike in safety violations.

The story of how the nation’s third-busiest commuter railroad declined so rapidly is a tale of neglect and mismanagement that represents an ominous symbol of the challenges facing mass transit systems across the United States in an era when governments are loath to raise taxes.

The agency’s troubles are especially perilous because it serves the country’s most crowded region, where hundreds of thousands of commuters depend on mass transit; the loss of productivity from the many wasted hours commuters endure on delayed trains is impossible to calculate.

A decade ago, New Jersey Transit was laying the groundwork for robust growth. While ridership has indeed boomed — nearly 20 percent more passengers have flooded the system in the past seven years — the railroad has failed to make the investments in infrastructure needed to meet the rising demand or to simply provide reliable service.

Today, its trains break down about every 85,000 miles, a sharp decline from 120,000 miles between breakdowns four years ago. The region’s two other large commuter rail systems, the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad, are twice as reliable: Their trains travel more than 200,000 miles between breakdowns. New Jersey Transit also reported more major mechanical failures: 213 in 2014, compared with 89 for the Long Island Rail Road and 169 for Metro-North.

In its first meeting in months, the New Jersey Transit board on Thursday appointed an executive from within the agency, Steven Santoro, as its new executive director.

The railroad’s falling reputation, some fear, could push people out of the state and turn others off from living there.

New Jersey Transit passengers on the way to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. The station, the nation’s busiest, was never meant to handle its daily flow of 600,000 passengers and 1,300 trains.Credit
Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

“If I had known how inconvenient New Jersey Transit was going to be, I never would have moved to where I did,” said Melissa Walters, 31, a social worker who lives in Union County. After having a baby this month, she and her husband are moving to Westchester County in New York in favor of Metro-North.

State Support Plummets

Today’s grim picture is a far cry from the recent past, when major investments by the agency helped to fuel a real estate boom in New Jersey. Three initiatives — Midtown Direct in 1996, the Montclair Connection in 2002 and Secaucus Junction in 2003 — increased the value of homes near lines with improved service by $23,000 on average, according to a 2010 report by the Regional Plan Association, an urban policy group. All together, the projects raised home values by $11 billion.

The proposal for a new Hudson River tunnel, known as Access to the Region’s Core, was a crucial next step, creating the path for more trains to New York. The project had cleared the high hurdle of securing federal financing and could have opened in 2018. But nine months after Mr. Christie became governor in 2010, he abruptly canceled the plan. That year, fares grew by nearly 22 percent.

Under the Christie administration, the agency’s finances have been dealt a blow. The direct state subsidy to its operating budget plummeted to $33 million last year from $348 million in 2009, according to the agency’s financial reports.

New Jersey Transit trains crossing the Passaic River over the Dock Bridge in Newark. A lack of investment in new infrastructure has contributed to service disruptions on the railroad.Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times

That decline has been offset by temporary infusions from New Jersey’s toll roads and utilities. But each year the railroad’s executives are still left to figure out where they will get the money to keep the trains running. New Jersey Transit has also had to divert billions of dollars from its capital budget to pay for operating costs, siphoning money from future improvements.

Mr. Christie has said he canceled the tunnel project over concerns that the state would be responsible for cost overruns. He also criticized the project’s inclusion of an underground station near the Macy’s store in Herald Square in Manhattan. The governor’s office has also argued that the overall state financing for New Jersey Transit’s operations has remained about the same, despite its shifting sources.

Mr. Christie and Richard T. Hammer, the state’s transportation commissioner, declined to discuss the challenges facing the railroad. Stephen Schapiro, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, responded to some questions submitted by email.

A nearly $45 million budget shortfall this year, Mr. Schapiro said, was “absorbed through internal efficiencies and using cash reserves.”

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A direct line to the police at the New Jersey Transit Rail Operations Center in Kearny.Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times

On the ground, belt-tightening means making do with less: Commuters complain about missing cars; some late-night trips have been canceled. The train that crashed in Hoboken was a car short, and a device required on board to record speed was not working.

“We’re not looking for extravagance, but you have to fund this in a safe manner,” said Stephen Burkert, a rail union leader and longtime conductor who joined New Jersey Transit in 1989.

Midway through Mr. Christie’s first year as governor, New Jersey Transit was spending about $1.35 billion on projects to maintain and improve service. By the middle of last year, that figure had fallen to about $600 million. The average age of the agency’s train fleet — nearly a quarter of which was flooded during Hurricane Sandy — is 16 years, compared with less than 13 years for the Long Island Rail Road.

Higher Fares and No Leader

Transportation experts argue that New Jersey Transit needs dedicated sources of revenue similar to those that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York has, instead of relying on a tumultuous state budget process. New York collects a fee on taxi rides, a payroll tax and other taxes for the transit system.

Spring Valley

MAIN LINE

to Port Jervis

PASCACK

VALLEY LINE

MONTCLAIR-

BOONTON LINE

MORRISTOWN LINE

Midtown Direct

BERGEN

COUNTY LINE

Hackettstown

NEWARK BROAD

STREET STATION

SECAUCUS JUNCTION

PENN STATION

Gladstone

HOBOKEN

NEWARK PENN

STATION

High Bridge

N. Y. C.

GLADSTONE LINE

Midtown Direct

RARITAN

VALLEY LINE

Princeton

NORTHEAST

CORRIDOR

Trenton

NORTH JERSEY

COAST LINE

Philadelphia

Bay Head

30th Street

Station

NEW JERSEY TRANSIT

ATLANTIC

CITY LINE

OCT. 13, 2016

By The New York Times

To close a $60 million budget gap last year, New Jersey Transit raised fares by about 9 percent, causing an uproar among commuters. Mr. Christie has hinted that fares could soon increase again.

In March, Mr. Christie settled a long-running dispute with rail unions over a labor contract, narrowly avoiding a crippling strike. Union leaders said the episode had hurt morale among workers, who had been working under an expired contract.

Mr. Robins, the former New Jersey Transit executive, agreed.

“That is a cardinal sin in labor relations,” he said. “It creates a very incendiary situation where people feel like they’re being taken advantage of.”

Mr. Burkert said Mr. Christie did not seem to understand New Jersey Transit’s essential role in the state’s infrastructure. “Had he taken buses or trains he would have seen — no, it’s not just people going to Wall Street,” he said. “It’s the blue-collar worker holding two or three jobs who doesn’t have money for a car, and they need that train.”

Working on brake pads under a train at the Meadowlands Maintenance Complex in Kearny.Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times

New Jersey Transit has lacked steady leadership amid its mounting challenges. Veronique Hakim, a highly respected executive director, stepped down last year to join the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Transit advocates rejoiced this spring when William Crosbie, a former Amtrak executive, was named to the post. But he quickly withdrew over a disagreement about keeping a home in Virginia — a reversal that angered Mr. Christie. Instead, a bus operations official, Dennis J. Martin, served as interim executive director.

Several top New Jersey Transit officials — all with deep experience running a railroad — have left for high-level transportation jobs elsewhere.

Last year, Michael Drewniak, an ally of Mr. Christie’s, joined the agency. Mr. Drewniak, who was embroiled in the scandal over the closing of traffic lanes at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 and is known for his combative tactics, now serves as New Jersey Transit’s chief of staff despite having virtually no transportation experience. He was Mr. Christie’s press secretary at the time of the lane closings and helped manage the administration’s response. He declined to comment about his current role.

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The view from inside a New Jersey Transit train on the Raritan Valley Line. The railroad’s falling reputation, some fear, could push people out of the state and turn others off from living there.Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times

On Thursday, during the meeting of the New Jersey Transit board, Mr. Hammer ordered Mr. Santoro to “take a renewed focus on safety” and to press ahead with installing technology that can automatically stop speeding trains. Mr. Santoro, who has been overseeing capital projects, said the agency had “challenges that we need to face” and “issues about getting our focus back.”

Delay Upon Delay

Trevar Riley-Reid is fed up with her chronically unreliable commute from Union County in New Jersey. Ms. Riley-Reid, a librarian at the City College of New York in Harlem, said delays kept her away from her family, including a 10-year-old daughter on the autism spectrum.

Eager to make it on time to a performance at her daughter’s school one night, Ms. Riley-Reid got off a stalled train in Newark and took a taxi. She arrived 20 minutes late, just as her daughter mounted the stage.

Despite having two master’s degrees, Ms. Riley-Reid has considered taking an overnight job at Target to be closer to home. “I love my job,” she said. “And I love the students I work with. But I don’t know how much longer I can do this commute.”

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Credit
Neil Collier/The New York Times

When things go awry, and they often do — there were at least 15 major train delays in September — commuters suffer. They wait in the Meadowlands on stalled trains. They cram onto overstuffed buses, PATH trains and ferries.

Just last week, a crowd of devoted Beyoncé fans were stranded on a broken-down train on their way to the singer’s concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford.

New Jersey Transit says about 93.5 percent of its trains are on time — a 2 percent decline from recent years and a seemingly exemplary record that commuters have trouble accepting. The figure refers to the full schedule rather than just rush hour, when delays are more disruptive.

Ridership has continued to grow. The railroad now carries about 165,000 people a day, up from about 138,000 in 2009. New Jersey Transit also has about 274,000 daily bus riders and 37,500 riders on light rail.

Many delays are a product of aging infrastructure that includes not just the Hudson tunnel but also the Portal Bridge, a century-old swing bridge over the Hackensack River. It is difficult to imagine better service without a huge overhaul of the entire corridor leading to New York City — a project that Amtrak, which controls the corridor, says could cost more than $20 billion.

Both Amtrak and New Jersey Transit rely on a single, two-track tunnel under the Hudson that was severely damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. There was little effort to jump-start plans for a new tunnel until a series of paralyzing delays last summer led to a scolding from the federal transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx, who called the neglect “almost criminal.”

Now a plan for a new tunnel is finally progressing. But federal officials worry that Amtrak may have to close one or both of the existing tunnel’s tubes for major repairs before a new one opens in a decade, a prospect that would be devastating to travel across the Northeast.

Then there is the quagmire that is Pennsylvania Station. The dispiriting maze — North America’s busiest train station, shared by Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road — was never meant to handle a daily flow of 600,000 passengers and 1,300 trains.

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Inside the cavernous control center for Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

With only 21 tracks, keeping trains moving requires a complex dance — one that determines the fates of commuters scrambling to make it to work, and home, on time.

On a recent morning inside Penn Station’s cavernous control center in Manhattan, trains were moving smoothly until a train reported a mechanical problem. It was the kind of hiccup that can set off a cascade of delays across the vast rail network. A day earlier, a signal problem with a train near Secaucus had delayed 26 trains.

“We have tracks, signal systems, catenary, power grids,” said Dennis Hamby, who runs the control center for Amtrak. “All the stuff has to work perfect or else we have a problem.”

Mounting Safety Lapses

In June, federal inspectors swarmed New Jersey Transit’s rail operations, part of a “deep audit” by the Federal Railroad Administration prompted by an increase in safety violations and a lack of leadership at the railroad. The federal agency fined the railroad for several violations and warned officials of the problems it had uncovered.

New Jersey Transit’s Secaucus Junction station. “It was an excellent railroad and running quite well until the last seven years, and it has been in constant decline,” said Martin E. Robins, a former deputy executive director of the agency.Credit
Richard Perry/The New York Times

The railroad administration, which has not made its audit public, examined New Jersey Transit’s operations, including whether crews were following safety rules. The agency is weighing additional enforcement steps against the railroad.

New Jersey Transit has cooperated with federal inspectors, and if they raise any issues, the agency will promptly address them, Mr. Schapiro, the Transportation Department spokesman, said.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board will determine whether the crash in Hoboken was caused by a mechanical problem or by human error, as well as whether the railroad had a poor safety culture — the damning conclusion of a federal review of Metro-North after a fatal derailment in the Bronx in 2013.

The accident in Hoboken was New Jersey Transit’s first fatal crash involving a commuter in 20 years, an impressive feat for an agency that runs hundreds of trains across a huge system each day. Nonetheless, the railroad has been cited for a large number of safety violations in recent years.

Since 2010, New Jersey Transit paid about $465,000 to settle 76 safety violations identified by the Federal Railroad Administration. During the same period, the Long Island Rail Road paid $77,000 to settle 18 safety violations, and the Metro-North Railroad paid about $346,000 to settle 71.

Train accidents were twice as common for New Jersey Transit during those years as they were for the region’s other commuter railroads. New Jersey Transit had 200 train accidents since 2010, though most were minor episodes. Metro-North had 100 accidents during the same period; the Long Island Rail Road had 58.

Days after the Hoboken crash, State Assemblyman John F. McKeon called for the railroad’s administration to release its findings and let commuters know whether the problems had been fixed.

“If trains are going to be delayed now and then, that’s one thing,” Mr. McKeon, a Democrat who represents northern New Jersey, said in an interview. “But safety’s nonnegotiable.”

The crash also revived calls for the addition of technology that can automatically stop a train headed for trouble. American passenger railroads are required to install such technology, known as positive train control, by the end of 2018. But New Jersey Transit has made virtually no progress toward that goal.

It was only after the crash that Mr. Christie reached a deal with Democratic lawmakers to raise New Jersey’s historically low gas tax by 23 cents a gallon to replenish a fund that pays for much of the state’s transportation work. When negotiations over the fund stalled this summer, Mr. Christie declared a state of emergency, halting work on $2.7 billion in New Jersey Transit projects. While the gas tax increase will finance billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, it will not solve the annual battle over financing the railroad’s operating budget.

Karl Ward, who was seriously injured while riding in the lead car of the train that crashed in Hoboken, said he was angry that New Jersey Transit had not installed an automatic braking system. Mr. Ward, a site-reliability engineer recovering from surgery on a knee hurt in the crash, said the brakes and the broader reliability problems must be fixed.

“I want to know that there’s a plan in place to solve the systemic problems,” he said. “The State of New Jersey has dragged its feet. It’s very disheartening.”

Correction: October 13, 2016
An earlier version of this article misstated the title of John F. McKeon. He is a New Jersey state assemblyman, not a representative.

A version of this article appears in print on October 14, 2016, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Neglect Brings a Steep Decline for N.J. Transit. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe